Meditate

Only 13 percent of SELF readers meditate regularly, but two thirds of you say you'd be willing to give it a try. Pick something simple and recurring to focus on, a mantra. "It could be your breath, a prayer or a saying, like, 'May this be a good day,'" says Rick Hanson, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist in San Rafael, California, and author of Buddha's Brain, who teaches meditation. Then repeat it in your head as long as you can, up to 20 minutes. "If you get distracted, that's OK," he says. Gently refocus until the mantra has recaptured your attention.

Take a breath

There may be no quicker way to trigger the magical relaxation response (and all the good genetic changes that come with it) than by controlling your breath. Not only will deep breathing lower your blood pressure, but recent research shows sucking wind, as it were, can also increase antioxidant levels in your blood, helping protect you from oxidative stress and all the dastardly conditions associated with it, including heart disease, hypertension, Alzheimer's disease and plain ol' aging.

Say ‘Om’

There's a reason you feel like a goddess when you walk out of yoga class, and it's not because you finally got your money's worth out of your gym. It's because yoga and similar mind-quieting methods have the potential to work as well as many medications at treating what ails you. People who attended only one 90-minute yoga class a week for 16 weeks reduced their back pain by two thirds and their pain medication usage by 88 percent, according to one study. Migraine sufferers who took up the habit for three months reported fewer and less intense headaches, and people on antidepressants who added thrice-weekly yoga for two months said they felt less depressed, anxious and angry.

Get your qi on

More than half of you say you've never heard of qigong. But the ancient Eastern practice, also known as Chinese yoga, can ease a long list of ailments, including heart disease, bone loss, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Try this move from Samuel Barnes, star of the DVD Element: Tai Chi for Beginners. (Tai chi is a form of qigong.)

Lifting hands: Stand tall with your feet hip-width apart, knees slightly bent, hands hanging down in front of thighs. Inhale and lift both hands to chest level, leading with the wrists. Then exhale and bring hands back to thighs, "painting the wall" with fingertips. Repeat for two minutes. Hooked? Find a teacher at QigongInstitute.org.

Reboot your iPod: Now it's a painkiller!

For headaches or joint pain, groove out. Chronic pain sufferers who listened to music for an hour a day for seven days reduced their hurt by 20 percent, according to a study by Sandra L. Siedlecki, Ph.D., senior nurse researcher at the Cleveland Clinic. The key is to choose tunes that recall a time when you were happy and free from pain. "Usually, we listen to music to validate how we feel. That's why we play sad songs after a breakup," Siedlecki says. "But to use music therapeutically, you need to listen to songs that make you feel the way you want."

Start smiling

Not only are positive thinkers less likely to develop heart problems such as high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases, they also live longer overall. In a 15-year study of more than 100,000 women, cheery types were 14 percent less likely to die in an eight-year period than gloomy gals were, the National Institutes of Health Women's Health Initiative finds. To change your thinking, visualize a happy moment: "Imagining yourself in a hammock on the beach can have an immediate, relaxing effect on the body that makes it more difficult to stay focused on the negative," says Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., a psychologist in Washington, D.C.